From: Yohanes Santoso <ysantoso-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2004-07-23T21:44:37+09:00
Subject: Re: sysread and buffered I/O

Tanaka Akira <akr@m17n.org> writes:

>  /*
>   *  call-seq:
>   *     ios.readpartial(integer [, buffer])    => string, buffer, or nil
>   *
>   *  Reads at most <i>integer</i> bytes from the I/O stream but
>   *  it blocks only if <em>ios</em> has no data immediately available.
>   *  If the optional <i>buffer</i> argument is present,
>   *  it must reference a String, which will receive the data.
>   *  It raises <code>EOFError</code> on end of file.
>   *     
>   *     STDIN.readpartial(4096)   #=> "Data immediately available"
>   */

How about:  STDIN.readposixly(4096) or STDIN.posix_read(4096)


Why posix?

The behaviour described above is similar to the behaviour of posix's
read function. posix's read function does a short read[1] if there is
not enough data available to satisfy the request, but perform a full
read if there is enough data. it will also block until there is some
data to be read.

I am actually leaning towards readposixly than posix_read. I read
'readposixly' as: do a read in a manner described in the posix
standard.

Meanwhile, 'posix_read' could be misinterpreted to be: read using a
posix function, which people on non-posix systems might interpret as
not being available on their systems.

Thanks,
YS.

Footnotes: 
[1]  reading less than requested. "short read" is a
well-established phrase. google for: ' "short read" posix '